Ukraine President Zelenskyy says protection minister Oleksii Reznikov shall be changed this week

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned Sunday that protection minister Oleksii Reznikov shall be changed this week with Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar lawmaker.

Zelenskyy made the announcement on his official Telegram account.

“I have decided to replace the Minister of Defense of Ukraine. Oleksii Reznikov has gone through more than 550 days of full-scale war. I believe that the Ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large. Now Rustem Umerov should lead the Ministry,” he mentioned.

Umerov, 41, a politician with the opposition Holos celebration, has served as head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine since September 2022. He was concerned within the change of prisoners of warfare, political prisoners, youngsters and civilians, in addition to the evacuation of civilians from occupied territories. Umierov was additionally a part of the Ukrainian delegation in negotiations with Russia over the U.N.-backed grain deal.

The announcement got here after two folks have been hospitalized following a 3½-hour Russian drone barrage on a port in Ukraine’s Odesa area on Sunday, officers mentioned.

The assault on the Reni seaport comes a day earlier than Russian President Vladimir Putin is because of meet along with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to debate the resumption of meals shipments from Ukraine underneath a Black Sea grain settlement that Moscow broke off from in July.

Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones alongside the Danube River within the early hours of Sunday, 22 of which have been shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian Air Force mentioned on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of workers, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as a part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry mentioned in an announcement that the assault was aimed toward gas storage services used to provide navy gear.

Putin and Erdogan’s long-awaited assembly is because of happen in Sochi on Russia’s southwest coast on Monday.

Turkish officers have confirmed that the pair will focus on renewing the Black Sea grain initiative, which the Kremlin pulled out of six weeks in the past.

The deal — brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022 — had allowed practically 36 million tons of grain and different commodities to go away three Ukrainian ports safely regardless of Russia’s warfare.

However, Russia broke away from the settlement after claiming {that a} parallel deal promising to take away obstacles to Russian exports of meals and fertilizer hadn’t been honored.

Moscow complained that restrictions on transport and insurance coverage hampered its agricultural commerce, despite the fact that it has shipped file quantities of wheat since final yr.

The Sochi summit follows talks between the Russian and Turkish international ministers on Thursday, throughout which Russia handed over a listing of actions that the West must take to ensure that Ukraine’s Black Sea exports to renew.

Erdogan has indicated sympathy with Putin’s place. In July, he mentioned Putin had “certain expectations from Western countries” over the Black Sea deal and that it was “crucial for these countries to take action in this regard.”

Elsewhere in Ukraine, three folks have been killed in two separate assaults by Russian shelling within the Donetsk space Sunday. An 85-year-old man was named among the many victims after being crushed by the rubble of his own residence, Ukraine’s Prosecutors’ Office reported.

A 36-year-old man was additionally killed in one other Russian assault on Ukraine’s Kherson area.

Ukrainian prosecutors introduced Sunday that that they had opened a warfare crimes investigation into the dying of a police officer killed by Russian shelling in town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon.